Six Sagas of Adventure (28 page)

[1]
   This prologue is not in Guðni Jónsson’s text, and is taken from Sverrir Tómasson’s edition (
Bósa saga og Herrauðs
, p. 5). The tone seems quite tongue-in-cheek (Vésteinn Ólason, “The Marvellous North,” p. 117), although O’Connor has argued that prologues like this may well have been intended seriously (“Truth and Lies in the Fornaldarsögur”, pp. 363-367).

[2]
   This is the so-called Learned Prehistory, in which the gods were euhemerized as human leaders who had migrated from Asia (from which the name of the main clan of gods, the
Æsir
, was supposedly derived). Snorri Sturluson’s
Edda
presents the Learned Prehistory in detail, connecting various pagan deities with the heroes of the Trojan War (
Prologue
4-11 and
Skáldskaparmál
, Epilogue; trans. Faulkes,
Edda
, pp. 3-5, 64-66; see also
Ynglinga saga
chs. 1-5 in
Heimskringla
, trans. Hollander, p. 6-10). The Learned Prehistory has no historical validity at all; reasoning like this was common in medieval scholarship, and it was a popular way to neutralize the old myths and make it acceptable for Christians to discuss and record them. See note 1 to
Sturlaugs saga.

[3]
  
Dagfari
and
Náttfari
mean “day-traveler” and “night-traveler”; their father’s name
Sæfari
means “seafarer”.

[4]
   Harald Wartooth’s story is told in the
Sögubrot
and in Saxo Grammaticus’s
History of the Danes
(VII.246-255, transl. Ellis Davidson and Fisher, pp. 225-233).

[5]
  
Sjóðr
means “purse”. Several puns on this name follow; I’ve left them untranslated.

[6]
   The word
brynþvari
, literally “chainmail-piercer”, means a type of thrusting spear;
Egils saga
(ch. 53) uses the word for a spear with a swordlike blade. Thvari’s name complements that of his wife,
Brynhildr
(“chainmail-Hildr”), and may allude to his victory in their fight. Alternatively, his name could be a sexual pun, in keeping with the escapades described later.

[7]
   This king is not mentioned in other sagas, but
Nóatún
, “ships’ enclosure”, is the mythological home of Njörðr, the god of the sea, shipping, and wealth.

[8]
  
Smiðr
means “smith; craftsman.”

[9]
   Old Norse
soppleikr
, “ball game.” The description is not precise enough to identify how the game was played, but it could be the same or similar to
knáttleikr
, a team sport played with a ball and sticks.
Knáttleikr
seems to have resembled the Irish game of hurling (Gunnell, “Icelandic
Knattleikur
and Early Irish Hurling,” pp. 68-69, and sources therein). Like this game of
soppleikr
,
knáttleikr
matches had a way of turning violent. See
Göngu-Hrólfs saga
ch. 9, notes 30-31.

[10]
   An ell is roughly two feet (61 cm), although the precise definition varied from place to place. The motif of the traveller who stands on cliffs and asks for passage from a ship is probably borrowed from the Volsung tradition, in which the traveler is Odin (
Völsunga saga
ch. 17;
Norna-Gests þáttr
ch. 6;
Reginsmál
16-25, transl. Orchard,
The Elder Edda
, pp. 158-159); Odin or a very Odin-like man also appears on a cliff asking for passage on his protegé’s ship in Saxo’s
Danish History
(I.32; transl. Ellis-Davidson and Fisher, p. 31). Inserting Bosi into this scene is probably meant as parody.

[11]
   The small rocky islands at the mouth of the Göta alv, on the present-day border between Norway and Sweden.

[12]
   The southern Baltic coast east of Denmark, home in the early Middle Ages to the Wends, a Slavic people.

[13]
   Gallo (“Persistent Motifs of Cursing”, pp. 121-128) has noted that these stanzas that threaten disaster if the king sails or rides are structurally similar to oaths of truce, and specifically to the lists of disasters that are to befall the breakers of such oaths. He concludes that “Buslubæn” is not an authentic pre-Christian curse, but is “a sort of
potpourri
of ancient curse-formulas” (p. 135); as such, it is still informative about pre-Christian practices.

[14]
   The name
Syrpa
is related to words for “rubbish” and probably means “dirty woman.” It appears as the name of an ogress in a few sources (e.g.
Jökuls þáttr Búasonar
chs. 1-2; the
Allra flagða þula
in
Vilhjálms saga sjóðs
—see Loth,
Late Medieval Icelandic Romances
vol. IV, p. 67). In the Icelandic saga
Finnboga saga ramma
it is the name of a poor old (human) woman.
Ljósvetninga saga
refers to a “party game” called
Syrpuþingslög
, “Law of Syrpa’s Assembly”, apparently some kind of mock court involving harassment of women.

[15]
   These runes are to be read by taking the first letters of each group of six, then the second letters, then the third letters, and so on. Thus unscrambled, they spell
ristil aistil þistil kistil mistil uistil
.
This is a version of a magic formula known as “thistle, mistletoe” or “
thistill–mistill–kistill.
” Examples appear on several memorial runestones and other Viking-era and post-Viking inscriptions, usually scrambled in the same way as in this saga. Not all of the words have a clear meaning, and some might be “nonsense rhymes,” but a possible interpretation would be “ploughshare?–testicle?–thistle–casket–mistletoe–
uistill
”. (MacLeod and Mees,
Runic Amulets and Magical Objects
, pp. 145-148; Thompson, “The Runes in
Bósa saga ok Herrauðs
”, pp. 50-56) Boyer points out that a slight rearrangement of the first letters of these words spell
raþumk
, i.e.
ráðumk
, “I decide; I order; I counsel” (
Les Sagas Légendaires
, p. 290) Note that Busla isn’t reciting this part of the spell orally, since she could not have pronounced the “bound” rune letters, but would have had to show them written down to King Hring. The formula’s meaning and intent have also shifted—it originally seems to have been protective—and on these grounds, her “prayer” has been interpreted as a late literary creation. (Thompson, pp. 55-56) On the other hand, the Eddic poem
För Skírnis
and several inscriptions use the thistle or the word
þistil
in curses against virility or fertility (Mitchell, “Anaphrodisiac Charms,” pp. 26-31), so the “prayer” may still reflect older traditions.

[16]
   Bjarmaland is the coast of the White Sea, inhabited at the time by the
Bjarmar
, a Finnic-speaking people. There were several historical Norse voyages to Bjarmaland; these inspired a number of legendary sagas, in which Bjarmaland figures as a land of sorcery and monsters (see Introduction).

[17]
   The wordplay here is hard to translate fully. When applied to a person,
herða,
“to harden”, means “to encourage”, and I’ve rendered it as “battle-harden” or “test in battle”—but it also means to harden steel by heating and quenching. “Put to the test” is my rendering of
komit í aflinn
, literally “brought into strength” or “brought into violence”—but
afl
, “strength, is a homonym of
afl
, “a forge.” Finally, Sverrir Tómasson suggests that
jarl
here means an iron bar (
Bósa saga og Herrauðs
, p. 75). The wordplay compares Bósi’s penis to both a young warrior and a bar of iron, and the woman’s vagina is both the warrior’s battleground and the forge where steel is tempered (and where it softens after being inside for a while).

[18]
   Norse
Jómali
is derived from Finnish
Jumala
, “god,” or a cognate in a closely related language (Ross, “The Terfinnas and Beormas of Ohthere,” pp. 48-50). Several legendary sagas contain accounts of heroes looting Jómali’s idol or temple; these seem to go back to an account in
Óláfs saga helga
(ch. 133) in
Heimskringla
(transl. Hollander, p. 403-408), in which Thorir Hund and his companions travel to Bjarmaland, trade peacefully, and then raid Jómali’s sacred place before making their escape
.

[19]
   The rare Norse word
dangandi
is derived from
danga
, “to thrash”, and has an obvious sexual meaning in context (Jiriczek,
Die Bósa-Saga
, pp. xxxvi). The English slang expression “banging” seemed to fit especially well.

[20]
   The phrase
ýmsi váru undir
(“by turns they were underneath”) echoes Bosi’s later sexual encounter in ch. 11, in which his partner
var ýmist ofan á eða undir
(“she was by turns on top or underneath”). Similar sexual innuendo appears in Beowulf’s fight with Grendel’s mother, who also manages to get on top of Beowulf as they grapple (Nitzsche, “The Structural Unity of Beowulf,” pp. 293-296).

[21]
   In
Grettis saga
(ch. 65), Grettir also has a wrestling bout with a female troll which ends when he chops off her arm at the shoulder. The
Grettis saga
episode has long been considered a relative of the same story found in
Beowulf
, although the relationship has been questioned (see Fjalldal,
The Long Arm of Coincidence
).

[22]
   In
Óláfs saga helga
(ch. 133; transl. Hollander,
Heimskringla
, p. 405), the idol of Jómali also holds a large silver bowl and wears a heavy necklace.

[23]
   Literally
þeir sögðu, at mörgu svaraði frestin
—“they said that a delay answered for much”. Sverrir Tómasson interprets this to mean that Bosi and Herraud are admitting that their delay in rescuing Hleid shows the limitations of their strength (
Bósa saga og Herrauðs
, p. 76), but this just seems an odd thing to say.

[24]
   Literally,
vit Bósi höfum sungit yfir hausamótum hennar
, “Bosi and I have sung over her skull-sutures.” This is anachronistic for a tale that supposedly takes place in distant heathen times, but such lapses in historical accuracy are not uncommon in legendary sagas, and don’t seem to have bothered the saga authors.

[25]
   In the later version of this saga, the vulture has two eggs. One is golden and precious (and is not broken when it’s given to King Hring), and the other is a
fjöregg
or “life-egg” containing the soul or the life force of the troll-priestess, who can only be killed if her
fjöregg
is broken. (Jiriczek,
Die Bósa-Saga
, p. 108; Einar Ólafur Sveinsson,
The Folk-Stories of Iceland
, pp. 59-61). Although this is not spelled out, it’s possible that the golden egg in this earlier recension was understood to be the priestess’s
fjöregg
, and it cracked when she died. The motif is widespread in European folktales (AT 302, “The Ogre’s Heart in the Egg,” Aarne,
Types of the Folktale
, pp. 93-94)

[26]
   The Battle of Brávellir was a colossal battle between the forces of Harald Wartooth and Sigurd Hring, involving virtually every hero and warrior in northern Europe. The battle is described in the saga fragment
Sögubrot
(chs. 7-9) and in Saxo’s
History of the Danes
(VIII.257-265, transl. Ellis Davidson and Fisher, pp. 238-244)
.
While there just might be a distantly remembered and distorted historical basis for the battle, it is primarily a matter of legend.

[27]
   The ability to get a favorable wind at will is a personal magical “knack” mentioned in the legendary
Örvar-Odds saga
and the other “Hrafnista sagas”.

[28]
   As mentioned in the introduction, this scene almost certainly borrowed from a French
fabliau
called “
La damoisele qui ne pooit oïr parler de foutre
” (“The girl who could not bear to hear talk of fucking”). As the young woman in the fabliau is being felt up by her seducer, he lays his hand between her legs and asks what he’s touching. She tells him it’s her pasture, with her well just below. When she does the same to him and asks what she has hold of, he tells her it’s his foal. She invites him to graze his foal in her pasture and water it in her well. (Sverrir Tómasson, ed.
Bósa saga og Herrauðs
, pp. 60-62)

[29]
   The idea of specific tunes or poems with the magical effect of forcing people to dance and/or making objects move also appears in
Þórsteins þáttr jarlaskálds
. 

[30]
  
Faldafeykir
, “Headdress Blower”, is given as the name of one of the Jólasveinar, “Yule-Swains”, the sons of the hideous ogress Grýla in Icelandic folklore (Jón Árnason,
Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri
, vol. 1, p. 219). It’s not clear to me what the connection is, if any.

[31]
   This is presumably a drone string, not directly plucked by the musician but tuned to vibrate sympathetically with the melody strings, adding richness to the tone. Drone strings were not used on known Viking-era harps, but they are used in later Scandinavian folk instruments, notably the Icelandic
langspil
, which has a large hollow body that looks like something that could conceal a person.